If anyone asks me, I will tell them that I'm not a believer of any particular religion. If I'm not close to this person, or I am under the assumption that the person will begin a religious debate with me if he/she is not satisfied with my answer, I will say that I'm a free thinker. An agnostic. But truthfully? While I do identify as an agnostic, I also identify myself as an atheist. I don't usually tell people that because the last thing I want to do is spark a theological debate that can last for at least an hour. (Been there, done that.)
I was raised in a Christian family. For 18 years of my life, I went to church, worshipped the idea of god and Jesus. For a very long period of time I never questioned my religion. I never asked why are we doing all of this? I was aware of the contradictions in the Bible, but I believed the slipshod excuses for these contradictions present. The message of one sermon could contradict another sermon and the lines were blurred sometimes, but I still followed nevertheless. I let confirmation bias rule my thoughts when it came to religion.
The questions begin to start when I was 17. Why are you doing this? What proof is there? Is this reason even valid?It was then that I began to feel that going to church was a chore. At that point of time, I had felt like "god" was no longer with me. I felt like what I was going through was what Christians would term a "dry season". I began to dread it every week. And it was due to this dread, the lack of emotional highs, that I began to question everything I knew about Christianity.
I began to see that the circular debates and loopholed arguments for what they truly were. I began to see that emotions are easily manipulated and I couldn't trust my gut to tell me whether god was there or not. And so I left.
The second most common question asked to me when people learn that I left church (The most common one is: Why?) was this: How do you feel after leaving church? I felt both ecstatic and frightened. Ecstatic because I was no longer trapped in this mundane cycle that I detested and loathed. No longer bound by the rules of the religions I no longer believed in. But I felt frightened too. Having been raised in an environment that instilled in me the belief that non-believers go to hell, that notion stuck with me far longer than I wanted it to. I had nightmares of being the target of a witchhunt for backsliders. I spent so much time wondering if I was really going to hell. It took me a while to finally get that notion out of my head and I'm so relieved that it's finally gone.
That was a dark part of leaving, but overall, I'm glad for that nasty experience. Because it taught me empathy. Before that experience, I never believed that the environment one grew up in could affect a person to a large extent. When I read of cases of physical or sexual abuse in the newspapers and it was mentioned that the perpetrator had once been a victim, I would snub the fact that the perpetrator had the cheek to mention it. Despite his background, he should still obey the law. No matter what. But now I know, environment can really determine how a person behaves. I began to see how I used to behave as a Christian, aggressively trying to impose my values on others who were non believers. Trying to get people to convert to Christianity. It's such an embarrassing part of my life because I lacked respect for other religions and values. I lacked empathy for others. Now, I see how disrespectful my behaviour was. And I see how context really matters. Because the values you were raised in affect your behaviour. And when these values aren't congruent with the law, clashes will arise.
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